Posts Tagged ‘weight’

Leading a fit and healthy life is probably every person’s dream. However, very few of you have the will power to fulfil such dreams. Are you one of them who spend hours at the gym every day in order to shed excess body weight?

There are many of you who work out at the gym on a daily basis but when it comes to proper results, it is not as expected. It is important for you to remember that your body weight should never be the primary focus of your workout routines.

There are people are fall in the category of “overweight” but are still healthy. On the other hand, there are people with normal weight and are unhealthy. To be sure you are becoming healthier by lowering your overall body fat composition is, you will have to use something other than a simple scale. Here are some methods that work best.

What is High Intensity Resistance Training (HIRT)?

High Intensity Resistance Training (HIRT) is essentially resistance training for fat loss, and like HIIT, it really is a big deal. HIRT training is the most effective way to increase your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), increase your Exercise Post Oxygen Consumption (EPOC), and burn calories at the same time.

When using HIRT you will execute several exercises together (sometimes called a super-set or giant-set), for a certain number of reps per set, for a certain number of minutes, without rest.

Along with HIIT, HIRT is a useful tool when avoiding endurance cardio while trying to lose fat, and it actually increases muscle mass more effectively than HIIT.HIRT training will give you the following benefits:

Most important, we have to stay true to the two rules of HIRT:

Rule #1 about HIRT: Don’t talk about HIRT. er… no, that’s a rule for a different club I attend on Saturday nights… ah, I’ve already said too much…

Seriously though, HIRT is all about maximizing intensity – you will get out of HIRT what you put into it.

You must maximize the intensity of each set. That means pushing it until you collapse or complete the drill. No resting or slowing down before the time limit is up.

You must maximize the intensity of each workout. Use all the time available to you, to complete as much work as possible. This is the only way to realize the maximum metabolic and muscle retention benefits of HIRT.

BMR and EPOC

As I mentioned before, along with burning calories through exercise, two of the most important factors in exercising to lose fat, are increasing BMR over the long term, and increasing EPOC per workout. Let’s learn a little more about BMR and EPOC, shall we?

Why do we care about BMR?

Your BMR describes the base metabolic rate for your body. It tells us how many calories your body burns at rest. Burning more calories at rest means you will lose fat faster or gain fat slower (if your daily calorie intake is too high). Improving BMR is simple: when you have more muscle mass, your body has a higher BMR.

Increasing your BMR will help you burn more calories over the long term.

Why do we care about EPOC?

Your EPOC describes how quickly your metabolism returns to your BMR after exercise. Because it deals more with the aerobic energy system, HIIT is more effective at increasing EPOC than HIRT, but not by very much. When targeting fat loss, we want to focus on workouts that increase EPOC as well as BMR.

The higher we can pump the EPOC after each workout, the more calories we will burn in the short term.

Who Can Benefit From HIRT

Anyone who wants to lose body fat while keeping all of their hard earned muscle mass, or anyone who wants to minimize fat gain while attempting to gain muscle mass. Alongside HIIT, HIRT should be a vital component to any serious fat loss plan.

HIRT would be useful for people who:

are looking to elevate their metabolism (BMR) long term

are looking to maximize short term fat loss through resistance training

are looking to keep as muscle as possible during a cutting phase

are looking to minimize fat gain during a bulking phase

are looking to increase aerobic endurance

are looking to increase anaerobic endurance

are looking to burn more calories on a daily basis

are looking to supplement their HIIT workouts with additional fat burning exercise

are athletes who participate in a sport such as boxing, MMA, soccer, basketball, football, wrestling, etc…, who need to increase muscular endurance in 5-10 minute bursts, while minimizing body fat

Who Should Avoid HIRT

Unlike HIIT, there are virtually no people who should avoid HIRT. Grasping at straws, the few people for whom HIRT might not be the best solution include those who:

are not cleared by their doctor to begin a high intensity exercise routine. Check with your doctor before starting HIRT.

are overzealous. You can’t use HIRT 3-4 times a week, and strength training or HIIT 3-4 times a week. Even though HIRT is not neurologically as taxing as HIIT or strength training, you still must rest between workouts.

are looking to maximize strength gains. Excessive HIRT and HIIT workouts will slow down strength gains.

are looking to increase speed. Because no sprints or max effort attempts are included in HIRT, speed will probably not be affected.

Designing a HIRT Training Routine

HIRT can be used for either cutting or bulking, usually maintain muscle mass while decreasing bodyfat, but also to minimize fat gains while increasing muscle mass. HIRT is also somewhat effective at improving aerobic endurance and even more effective at increasing anaerobic endurance.

As always, your diet is still 75% responsible for determining how these goals are achieved. Manipulate calorie intake and macronutrient ratios to gain muscle or lose fat according to your goals.

These are the guidelines I will use for creating a HIRT workout:

Each HIRT workout must be a full body routine.

Sets of 5 to 15 reps will be used. Lower reps to focus on muscle gain, higher reps to focus on muscular endurance.

Each HIRT workout will use super-sets, tri-sets, or giant-sets.

Each HIRT exercise will be a compound exercise focusing on the largest muscle groups.

Each super-set should last 8-10 minutes.

60-90 seconds rest between super-sets.

No rest within a super-set.

All exercises should be executed explosively – meaning as fast as possible while maintaining good form.

Three Sample H.I.R.T. Training Splits

There are thousands of ways you can integrate HIRT into your workout routine. You can use full body workouts, a 5 day split with HIRT at the end of your strength training, you can go HIIT-less to avoid sprinting, you can focus solely on HIIT and HIRT for max fat loss. You are only limited by your own imagination.

Three Sample H.I.R.T. Workout Routines

Sample HIRT workout #1

For this workout, you will have to change equipment and/or stations to move to each new exercise, so your best bet will be to plan ahead and keep all the equipment you will need for the super-set at one station. This will keep rest down between sets.

Execute each super-set for 10 minutes without rest.
Rest for 180 seconds between super-sets.
The workout should take 45 minutes including a 5 minute warm-up and stretching after the workout.
Super-set A:

10 reps of deadlifts with 20% of your 1 rm

5 clapping pushups

5 chin ups

10 ab wheel roll outs

Super-set B:

5 jump squats

5 pull ups

10 bench presses with 20% of your 1rm

5 windshield wipers

Super-set C:

5 one leg split squats with each leg

10 inverted rows

10 push ups

5 fold ups with a half second pause at the top

Sample HIRT Workout #2

For this workout, you will have to change equipment and/or stations to move to each new exercise, so your best bet will be to plan ahead and keep all the equipment you will need for the super-set at one station. This will keep rest down between sets.

Execute each super-set for 10 minutes without rest.
Rest for 180 seconds between super-sets.
The workout should take 45 minutes including a 5 minute warm-up and stretching after the workout.
Super-set A:

5 push ups

5 inverted rows

5 jump squats

5 cable crunches

Super-set B:

5 chin ups

5 pistol (or one leg) squats

5 Russian twists with a medicine ball

5 push ups on the medicine ball

Super-set C:

10 skipping lunges

5 ab wheel roll outs

5 dumbbell or kettlebell swings with each arm

5 neutral grip one arm dumbbell or kettlebell rows

Olympic HIRT Workout

For this workout, you will move from one exercise to the next without any rest at all, since you won’t have to change equipment. Each movement will set you up to transition to the next movement, so that you are only executing one rep of each exercise per set and then flowing directly into the next rep of the next exercise.

This workout mainly utilizes Olympic lifts. Use really light weight or you might die, but you will probably puke anyway.

Execute each super-set for 10 minutes without rest.
Rest for 180 seconds between super-sets.
The workout should take 45 minutes including a 5 minute warm-up and stretching after the workout.
Super-set A:

What Kaatsu Training Does

Kaatsu training looks like it can increase muscle hypertrophy significantly more than regular resistance training over an extremely short period of time. In fact the results of the studies show that 2 weeks of Kaatsu training increases muscle mass to a higher degree than 5 weeks of regular resistance training.